a biden/harris ticket is stronger than clinton/kaine was in 2016 IMO.
I would say Kamala Harris is going to do more harm than good to the Biden campaign. If he wants to sweep the swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa.etc, then he should select someone who is a moderate and not an extreme-left candidate such as Harris. Tammy Duckworth is being talked a lot as the VP candidate nowadays, and I should say that she is much more beneficial to Biden than Harris.
it's a fine line. the dems need to energize progressive and black voters, especially in this coronavirus context where poor turnouts will only help republicans. that's not easy to do considering biden was the most right-leaning of all democratic candidates. i may be wrong about this, but my belief is that biden's VP pick is much more important to democrats than potential swing voters and 2016 non-voters, who are focused on trump vs biden.
this is what i'm talking about re republican-leaning moderates, senior citizens, independents, etc:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/us/politics/biden-2020-third-party.htmlThey are among an emerging group of voters who disliked both major-party presidential nominees in 2016, but who are now so disillusioned with President Trump — and sufficiently comfortable with Mr. Biden — that they are increasingly willing to support the Democrat.
It’s a dynamic that could have significant implications in several of the most competitive battleground states, like Arizona and Wisconsin, where the third-party vote in 2016 was greater than the margin of difference between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. Recent polling also shows that Mr. Biden has an overwhelming advantage over Mr. Trump among voters who have unfavorable views of both candidates — a cohort that ultimately broke in Mr. Trump’s favor in 2016, exit polls showed.
.....
But in a year when swing voters are scarce, some of the voters who effectively stayed on the sidelines in 2016 are showing signs of political movement now — and there is evidence that Mr. Biden stands to benefit.
There appears to be far less interest in third-party candidates compared with the same point in 2016, pollsters say.
“Barring some unforeseen circumstance, there’s just not a lot of appetite for third party,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “This is two-person for nearly all American voters.”
His polling from late June found that among voters who have unfavorable views of both candidates, Mr. Biden leads the president 55 percent to 21 percent. In 2016, Mr. Trump won the voters who disliked both candidates, according to exit polls.
And according to a recent poll of registered voters in six major battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College, people who say they did not vote in 2016 overwhelmingly favor Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump, 56 percent to 25 percent.
biden appears to have a strong edge among third party and swing voters, whereas trump had that advantage in 2016.
the big question mark for me is voter turnout and specifically the fate of mail-in voting. trump knows a big turnout will basically guarantee a biden victory, hence his filing of various lawsuits attempting to stop mail-in voting before november:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/19/trump-interview-mail-voting-329307“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump said. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.”